


Give or Take

by colormetheworld



Category: Ocean's 8 (2018)
Genre: Debbie's so interesting. I like playing around in her head, F/F, just some BTS bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 00:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16733982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colormetheworld/pseuds/colormetheworld
Summary: Debbie considers the fact that she might not be only built for crime.





	Give or Take

“Are you going to sell me out?”

Debbie has trained herself to never look surprised by any question, though this time it does take  
some work.

“What?”

Tammy comes to sit next to her. She smiles out at the water. “Are you gonna sell me out?” she  
repeats mildly. “If this all goes sideways.”

“It’s not going to go sideways,” Debbie answers automatically.

“Right,” Tammy nods. “But if it does...Hypothetically speaking.”

“It won’t,” Debbie insists, hearing the irritation in her voice. “I've been planning this for-”

“Five years," Tammy says, "Yes. I know. Now pause the swagger for a moment, and tell me what happens if things don't work out as planned. Who's the fall guy after Calvin? "

"Claude," Debbie corrects. "What's it to you?"

Tammy sighs. "Well if I'm next in line-"

Deb crosses her arms over her chest, keeping her face set.  "You're not,” she says, putting on an indignant expression.

Tammy is silent for a couple of moments. “I believe you,” she says.

Debbie shoots a look in her direction. “Good! It's the truth!”

Tammy bites her lip for a moment. “So Claude deserves jail time,” she says, “but not me?”

Tammy studies the side of Debbie's head intensely like she could look right through into her brain.

“I don’t remember you sending me to sail, Tam," Debbie says, smirking.

Tammy makes an understanding sound. “So it’s tit for tat then? Just paying him back what he deserves?”

“Yep.” Debbie doesn't like where this conversation is headed. “Repayment. Nothing else”

“So you don't love him.” Tammy's voice is both teasing and serious.

"Jesus! "Debbie says, unable to keep real emotion out of her reaction this time. “No! I do robbery, Tammy, not scorned lover.”

"Mmm," Tammy says. She finally turns her gaze away, and without looking at her, Debbie isn’t able to tell what she’s thinking.

She decides not to chance it. She takes a moment to feign hurt. “You thought I'd gamble sending you away?” She asks. “You think I'm that heartless?”

Tammy shakes her head. "No," she says simply.

“You have kids,” Debbie says not willing to drop the subject.

“You hate kids,” Tammy scoffs with a little laugh.

“Yeah, but you don't.” Debbie says it before she realizes that it reveals too much of her inner workings. She deliberately stares very hard at the tiny waves against the gravel beach until Tammy’s eyes are no longer burning through her temple.

“You’re not all criminal, you know,” she says softly.

Debbie doesn’t say what she would like to say, which is: _Too criminal for you._ Instead, she produces her best smirk and looks up to the left for the briefest second.

“Yeah well, you’re not all soccer mom, Tam-Tam.”  She stands to head back inside, to get away from the memories that are threatening in the air around them.

“Though not for lack of trying.”

…….

And why hadn’t she been able to make things work with Tammy?   
Because she’d wanted kids? A house in the suburbs? The pretense of a _normal_ life? Debbie wanted all of those things too…

Except for the house in the suburbs...that sounded like a nightmare.

And no to the normal life thing, I mean, could you _imagine_ ?   
  
...And no kids. Not until they turned at least fifteen, and only if they had tiny little hands that were perfect for undoing clasps, and picking locks...   
  
...So, no, they hadn’t worked out, and Tammy had moved out, and on, and she’d gotten married and that was just fine.   
  
I mean, it was fine after a while. It got...finer over time.

Actually, it had been so not fine that she’d royally fucked up, and that had sent her to prison. Then it had been the seething, furious, _opposite_ of fine for five years, eight months and twelve days.

Give or take.

And when she’d gotten out, Lou had been waiting for her as if she deserved it. As if they’d never fought, and as if Claude didn’t exist. She’d leaned over the armrest of the car and taken Deb’s head in her hands and kissed every part of her face that was visible to her.

Lou, sweet and sexy and _there_ to get her.

“Take it easy,” Debbie said because she is not programmed for sentimentality. “I’ve been in the slammer.”

Lou, sweet and sexy and there, and perfectly tuned to all of her moods, she just answered with a quip of her own.

Now, Debbie tries to think about the moods she’s allowed Lou to see. If she’s honest, it’s probably only like three.

Sarcastic, frustrated, cocky...Is smug the same as sarcastic? Debbie wants to tell Lou that even if those two words are synonymous, she’s still seen two more emotions than the rest of the team.

And that’s something, right?

…

Apparently not.

Lou finds her four days later in the same spot that Tammy had. It occurs to Debbie, as Lou rages, that she should have found somewhere else to do her thinking.

“This is going to backfire, and we’re going to get caught,”  she says.

Debbie shakes her head. “We’re not going to get caught,” she says. In the days leading up to the heist, she has become a broken record, repeating this mantra to anyone that needed to hear it.

“...Not a tourist with a bucket of quarters,” Lou is saying. “Don’t con me.”

The tone of this last phrase makes Debbie look up into Lou’s eyes for a split second. She sees real, genuine hurt there, under the anger.

 _I wouldn’t let anything happen to you_.

“I didn’t do it,” she says mildly. It’s weak, as far as alibis go, so she elaborates. “I didn’t set Claude Becker up for this. It just...happened.”

Lou shakes her head. She turns her back, but she doesn’t leave.

They’ve only had sex one time since Debbie’s been out. It was before the warehouse filled up with plans and people, and the space had felt big and limitless in its potential. Debbie is, has always been, a restrained lover, but Lou was loud and aggressive, _rambunctious._ It amazed Debbie that anyone so passionate should be the least bit interested in her.

When they finished, Lou had crawled up, under her arm and kissed the jut of her cheek.

“I missed you the nights you weren’t in my bed. The ones before you went inside.”

This is how she’d broached the subject of the fight that drove Debbie into the arms of Claude. Debbie didn’t answer, but she didn’t pretend to be asleep either.

“If I…” Lou started and then stopped. She’d drawn her finger along the line of Debbie’s neck. “I felt so guilty,” she’d said. "Like I'd-" 

“Don’t,” Debbie had said, more harshly than she meant to in her rush to cut off the end of the other woman’s sentence. “There’s no reason to feel that way. I make my own choices.”

And then, because she could tell by the silence that Lou’s outlook had not changed, Debbie gave her a memory, hoping it would make up for what she could not say.

“One Christmas, my dad brought home a tree for us to decorate. I was six or so, and I thought it was going to be like the one in Times Square, I was so disappointed when he dragged it in. Just some scraggly old thing he probably stole.

“Well he heard me talking about how I was disappointed, and he dragged me and the tree outside...made me watch while he set it on fire. No Christmas that year.”

Had Lou understood? Had she heard what Debbie was trying to say?

She gave it one last shot. “Danny told me when I was crying about it later, that it would have happened sooner or later. The outcome is the outcome. Nothing to feel guilty about.”

“Why do you do this?” Lou has turned back. Debbie blinks, and they are back in the present, outside of the warehouse, down by the water.  She looks sad. She looks...so sad. “Why can’t you just do a job? Why does there always have to be an asterisk?”

Debbie wants to take this woman’s face in her hands and kiss every place she can reach.

“He’s going to send you to jail again,” Lou says. She is despairing already.

Debbie steps close to her until there is no place to look except right into each other’s eyes.

“No he’s not,” she says. Confidence. Cocky.

Sincere.

“He’s not.”

……

……

“You know I saw you.” Lou catches Debbie’s arm and keeps her from going into the main room with the others.

They are all celebrating, Daphne at the center, and none of them miss their leaders in this moment. None of them is looking.

“Should we break it to them now?” Debbie asks, turning to look at Lou. “That their all a lot richer than they think they are?”

Lou’s smile is like the one Debbie saw across the street: secret and just for her.

“You worried about me.” It isn’t a question.

“Hmm?”

“I was a minute late to the visual. And you were worried.”

Debbie balks. She thinks about denying.

But Lou still has a hand on her arm, and her expression is mischevious and amused, not just loving.

“A minute and forty-seven second,” Debbie corrects her.

Behind them, Tammy’s laugh rings out, a little higher than the others. Debbie can tell that Lou has heard it by the arch of her eyebrow.

“Did you love her?” she asks.

Debbie waves her free hand vaguely, as though she could deflect this question like smoke.

What she says is, “probably.”

Lou looks impressed. “I’m biking the California coast,” she says, smiling as Debbie puts an arm around her waist. “I don’t want you to come with me.”

“Good,” Debbie says into the crook of her neck. “I hate motorcycles.”

“I won’t be gone long,” Lou says softly. She puts one of her pale hands to the nape of Debbie’s neck. Everything is okay, if just for the moment.

The heist was successful. Money is not a problem. She has lead this team to a success her brother never knew.

The cloying, fitful pressure in her chest, the one that arrives after so many weeks of downtime, it has not yet appeared.

“Not long?” Debbie confirms.

Lou shakes her head. She leans in, and kisses Debbie’s cheek.

It feels good.

“A couple months,” Lou says. “Give or take.”

  



End file.
